Posted by
NOTLEGALROADKILLYET on Thursday, February 08, 2007 2:25:43 PM
The Denver Post has a well written, well researched article on HB 1072, the labor law that has the whole business community in Colorado up in arms.
You can see the mind of a lawyer at work in the first four paragraphs. They didn't ask, so I didn't tell them.
Gov. Bill Ritter may have been surprised by the speed with which a controversial bill to change state labor law hit his desk. But he certainly knew it was coming - his campaign promises helped set it in motion.
"He said if the bill came across his desk he would sign it," said Ed Bagwell, head of Teamsters Local 2004 in Denver.
It's a pledge that apparently was well-known in labor circles but nowhere else, sparking the fury that has dominated the Democrat's first month in office and set up one of his first official acts as a high-profile test of loyalty.
Business leaders, some of whom supported Ritter over Republican Bob Beauprez, never asked Ritter where he stood on proposals to eliminate one of the two votes needed for unions to negotiate all-union shops.
"Business never asked me about it," Ritter said in a recent interview. "They were pretty much focused on the things that (Republican former Gov. Bill) Owens had seen. And my recollection is Gov. Owens had never been confronted with the issues involving the Labor Peace Act."
Ritter is no moderate, and he has the ethics of a lawyer-none.
But don't worry. The Democratic legislative leadership has been caught in its own lie:
While legislative leaders have denied the bill was given any special status, Colorado AFL-CIO president Steve Adams said he pushed for quick passage in order to send a strong message.
"I actually think it was our idea to run (the legislation) quickly and quietly. We wanted to kind of demonstrate to our workers that life's a whole lot better with Democrats in charge," he said. "Obviously, there was some miscalculation on the quiet part."